Bioshock Infinite

I just played through and completed Bioshock Infinite.
I’ll jut prefix this with the fact that I had not played Bioshock before playing Infinite, well I had played approximately twenty minutes of Bioshock before my computer died and I had to install a fresh OS, so for all intents and purposes I was vaguely familiar with Rapture and nothing more.

I thuoght Columbia was a beautiful slice of a retro future, everything looked as if it were a slice right out of the late 1800’s mixed with a beautiful scifi twist, and I enjoyed the story immensely, but I have to admit I was rather glad I had waited til Infinite was on promotion before purchasing it, for little reasons.
Firstly I managed to complete Infinite in about 7 hours, without exceptionally rushing through the game, I am pretty certain that if I hadn’t tried to explore so much I would have cut that down at least 60/90 minutes, now this in itself doesn’t bother me as much as the feeling of being stuck on a track and not being able to explore.
A game doesn’t need to be 30+ hours, but if I have a world to explore then I can personally stretch 5 hoours of gameplay into double that at least, considering this the filesize was huge, though admittedly my download included the DLC’s I had a roughly 35GB download, this just seems huge for what I played through.
And then the game just seemed to be cut in places, like ideas thaat didn’t run their course, things that got cut and didn’t go anywhere, from messages painted upon walls to the repetitive use of the “tears”.

I fear that second one might need explanation, if you haven’t played Infinte then your sidekick Elizabeth can open tears in reality, which primarily fall into two camps, supplies and game changing moments, supplies pop up pretty much any time you’re in a combat zone and are generally needless when Elizabeth is continually finding items to throw to you, they do however give you a chance to change weapons with an appropriate weapon appearing in a tear when ever you need it, and they allow you some manner of cover to hide from attackers.
When I say that tears are also game changing moments, I mean just that and I don’t want to ruin the game for anyone who hasn’t played it but in several instances you find yourself in a situation that you can’t escape and luckily there is a tear to another world near by, so the game changes.

To me this was just under utilised, there was so much you could have done with tears, puzzles you could solve and locked doorways you could escape through, maybe including such a thing would have taken much more time in an already lengthy development, but all I know is if I could make the game anything I wanted, it would be as open world as possible with the ability to fight through the world you’re currently in or use a neuteral world to bypass the troubles, to me this would allow for hit and run tactics so you can jump out of reality behind your enemies, almost like a slower moving Nightrawler from X-Men.

I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy the game, I loved Bioshock Infinite, as I say the visuals of the game were pretty stunning even on my less than stellar PC, I thought the story was great and was smart enough for a complete nerd like me, whilst approaching the subject in a way that wouldn’t alienate too many people, my grievances with the game do not really amount to much beyond being glad I bought the game on sale.

And for those who haven’t seen it, might I introduce you to Booker Catch.